American Honey

Nearly four years ago, we made the difficult decision to sell our beloved home in Ashland to move to Canton to be closer to family. I have not regretted that choice, especially as it placed us nearby during the challenging months before the sweet Emma Belle’s birth. Yet whenever I’ve left a community I’ve grown to love (Ashland, Canton, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Dover – and of course, Tonawanda), I’ve regretted leaving behind relationships that will never be quite the same, no matter the vows we make to stay in touch. Leaving town also removes the probability that acquaintanceships from that place will be nurtured into friendships, the kind celebrated with long, lingering conversations and shared dreams.

 

As I read “American Honey: A Field Guide to Resisting Temptation,” the memoir recently released by Sarah Wells, an acquaintance and Facebook friend, I’ve definitely wished we still lived in Ashland. If we did, Sarah and I might be spending time at the coffee shop, comparing notes about mud-splattered spats from our high school band uniforms, coming of age in a blue collar family, the escapades of two boys named Henry (her son, my grandson), and the challenges of being a woman with ambition and faith. Those imaginary conversations would be peppered with our mutual love for reading and writing, and our appreciation for the power of words – and yes, my propensity for run-on sentences! 

 

Since I live in North Canton and Sarah lives in Ashland, we’re separated by sixty miles of a ribbon of highway, as well as a generation of living. Thus, I have to be content to soak up the words she’s committed to print, tasting the sand and the salt of potato chips at the beach, and feeling the tear-kissed tenderness she shared with her beloved Brandon over a pan of sweet potato fries. I wish I’d had her ten (or is it eleven?) strategies to manage your crazy (self) person when I was at my craziest. I needed someone to say, “Get up fifteen minutes earlier, for God’s sake, and slow the morning down a smidgen. Start the day with a Word so it sticks to your hips like the pancakes.’ And if even that sounded impossible, I needed someone to tell me it was OK to call a babysitter so I could have time for myself without feeling guilty, for it truly is “better to have a sane mom some of the time than a crazy one all of the time.” Granted, this memoir is no traditional self-help guide to marriage, but that page of strategies is worth the price of the book.

 

How I love to read, and I am loving the pages of this book. As Alberto Manguel explains, “At one magical instance in your early childhood, a page in a book – that string of confused, alien ciphers – shivered into meanings. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; new universes opened. At that moment, you became, irrevocably, a reader.” Mrs. Ditmer’s first grade class at Fletcher School flipped that switch for me. Since that moment, I’ve found inspiration, adventure and solace between the covers of a book, and Sarah’s words haven’t disappointed. 

 

As a writer, I’m fascinated at how an image or just a few words can make a lasting impression. My favorite of the many images in “American Honey” came in Wells’ chapter, “The Worst Soccer Mom,” for she sums up the travails of parenting when her husband was out of town by describing the lowest point of soccer practice with a six-year-old, a five-year-old (the budding soccer star), and a sixteen-month-old. “I’m out of Cheerios.” If you’ve been there, you understand.

 

As a teen, I religiously read the monthly magazine feature, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” As a counselor, I’ve been present with couples who wrestled with that same question. I’ve read scores of books on marriage, written a marriage curriculum (MarriageTools) and even a book on using guerilla warfare tactics to cope within difficult marriages. All too often, the focus is on fixing what is broken, often necessary to preserve vows, to keep promises. 

 

But in “American Honey,” Wells doesn’t preach or counsel, provide a to-do list or a magic formula. Instead, she writes of the love story of Sarah and Brandon. Sue Monk Kidd reflects: “Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.” Ultimately, while Wells acknowledges the fragility of marriage and family, she honors the wholeness of life: “Okay, so our love keeps record of wrongs, but also mercies. After all, we are here. We hold our wrongs and mercies together in careful intimacy.” Not perfect, but whole.